(Project of the Historical Materialism Series at Brill)

Vpered Publications – Вперед (Женева) №2 (20 октября 1915)

The second issue of Vpered newspaper (published by the group in Geneva) is dedicated to the discussion of The Zimmerwald Conference that took place in September of 1915. The long editorial declares the group’s alliance with internationalism (against various national-patriotic arguments that socialists must align with their respective governments). There is no need to recall the history of the Zimmerwald Movement here, but here’s a link to the initial manifesto.

The editorial text supports internationalism and decries various nationalist reactions to the conference – from ignoring it in the official socialist press to supporting various conspiracy theories about its origins (i.e. Germans supported the movement in order to weaken their opponents in the war and so on).

Since no representative of Vpered participated in the conference, the largest part of the issue is dedicated to Vpered‘s program in Russia and in the new International.

Another long text is by Lebedev-Poliansky – on the defeat of Russia – written before the Zimmerwald conference and therefore we see a date next to his signature – September 3rd, 1915 (Zimmerwald Conference took place September 5 to 8).

Lunacharsky (as Voinov) wrote another short piece, a stab at Plekhanov, under a provocative title “Patriotic Psychosis”:

And finally we have a certain statement on the fate of Aleksinskii who, according to the editors of Geneva section of Vpered still claims to represent the group but who, according to them, was long ago expelled from it. What happened to our old friend Ivan the Unemployed (Dmitrii Manuilskii) is unclear.

The link to the full issues is here. Quality of the scan isn’t the best but that’s the best copy I have.